Some of the videos posted on BardBox have been subsequently removed from the host site, either through rights infringement or by the video’s creator. This page documents those BardBox videos now lost to the online world.
Hamlet’s Tale of Awesome
Date: 2007
Posted by: JesseMeza07
Credits: Written by Jesse Meza, animated by Jesse Meza and Nick Sampson, artwork by Nick Sampson
Cast: Jesse Meza (voices)
Duration: 3.50
Genuinely funny cut-down Flash animated version of Hamlet, apparently produced as a school project, though at times it looks too professional. A little more attention to the final scenes, where the filmmakers appear to have become a bit bored with their subject, would have turned it into a good film. The video skims through the ghost’s first appearace (“Casper? Is that you?”), ‘to be or not to be’, Hamlet’s questionable sexuality, the ghost telling Hamlet that he is his father (“Wow, you can recite Star Wars quotes”), a play performed by sock puppets entitled “How a King killed his brother and married his wife”, a bloodbath of revenge in which everyone dies, and Fortinbras becomes king (“Pretty dull, right?”). The result is not just a spoof of the familiar, but highlights those aspects of the play that might seem ridiculous, dull or simply not credible to a high school audience. It puts up to ridicule those absurdities all too evident to the indifferent.
Links
YouTube page
Lear
Date: 2005
Posted by: mf99
Credits: The credits, in MTV Style, say “Lear”, by Wilson Mccutchan, on Phat Phish Records
Cast: David Mclean (King Lear), Chris Teolis (Cordelia), Kevin Hagino (The Fool), James Mangan (Stunt Lear), Andrew McConnon (Regan), Victor Wong (Goneril), Wilson Mccutchan (Lead Vocal)
Duration: 7.07
A first-rate parody of the video for Eminem’s ‘Stan’, changing the story from that of an obsessed fan who writes repeatedly to Eminem before killing himself and his girlfriend, to King Lear writing to his daughter Cordelia (“Dear Cordelia, I wrote to you, but you still ain’t calling, hope there’s not a problem, I sent two letters to France in autumn…”), complete with the sample from Dido’s ‘Thank You’ to intercut the familiar tale of ‘drama, violence and death’. It works ingeniously well, finding adroit parallels in these two tales of disordered passion, maybe even offering some insight into the psychodrama that is King Lear.
Links
The original ‘Stan’ video, directed by Phil Atwell and Dr. Dre in 2001
YouTube page
Much Ado About Nothing
Date: 2007
Posted by: LiveTheatreSkaro
Credits: Produced by Rogues and Vagabonds
Cast: Dalek Snowdon (Beatrice), Dalek Kenneth (Benedick), with Alan Knight, Kit Loughmane, Linds Redding
Duration: 4.29
Dalek Masterpiece Theatre presents Much Ado About Nothing (Act 4 Scene 1). Beatrice and Benedick are portrayed as Daleks, the sinister pepper pots from the BBC television series Doctor Who. The lines are mostly Shakespeare’s (with a few references to the Daleks’ leader, Davros, and the inspired borrowing of the Daleks’ famous cry to give us ‘Exterminate Claudio!), until the two performers end up squabbling, with intervention off-camera by the director. Dalek Masterpiece Theatre describes itself as “an all-Dalek amateur dramatic society”. In reality (?) it is a production of Rogues and Vagabonds, a touring theatre company from Waiheke Island, New Zealand.
Links
Rogues and Vagabonds
YouTube page
Shakespeare does Sweet Home Alabama
Date: 2007
Posted by: billyharper11
Credits: Created by Billy Harper
Cast: Billy Harper (William Shakespeare)
Duration: 3.05
William Shakespeare, he likes nothing better when he’s relaxing at home with some friends to start singing songs and playing some air guitar. Here he invites us all to join in the party and sing along with Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’.
British comic performer Billy Harper has played Shakespeare in a variety of comedy music modes on YouTube, miming to songs with some skill. There’s Shakespeare rapping to Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby’, Shakespeare doing his Barry White impression, and Shakespeare as Snoop Dogg. Irresistible stuff.
Links
YouTube page
Othello
Date: 2007
Posted by: clanxmac
Credits: Created by clanxmac (Liz), music ‘Nineveh’ by E.S. Posthumous. A Low Flying Kiwi Production
Cast: Christian Bale (Othello), Emily Watson (Desdemona), Sean Bean (Iago), Angus MacFayden (Brabanzio), Tyne Diggs (Cassio), Sean Pertwee (The Duke of Venice)
Duration: 5.29
This is really quite inspired. Its creator has taken footage from the 2002 film Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson and Sean Bean, and recut it as though it were a trailer for an Othello. The original film is a science fiction drama, set in a future world controlled by a Fascistic regime which suppresses the emotions and the arts. Equilibrium has no connection with Othello (it owes rather more to Orwell), but by concentrating on the three characters, with some clever choice of shots, and with a good deal of the power of suggestion making our minds doing the rest of the work for her, the filmmaker does indeed create something like Othello (even if Othello himself is not black). It goes on a bit long, and the mispelling of ‘despair’ is unfortunate, but as a kind of mashup in reverse, this is a creative piece of work.
(The video opens with lines from W.B. Yeats’ “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven” – Yeats’ poetry is a feature of the film Equilibrium).
Links
YouTube page
Richard III … with Gnarls Barkley
Date: 2008
Posted by: kjnwcedu
Credits: Created by Keith Jones
Cast: Frederick Warde (Richard III)
Duration: 1.22
Another mashing up of silent Shakespeare with unlikely music by Professor Keith Jones, the man who gave us Julius Caesar with a wassailing song. Here extracts from the 1912 feature film Richard III, starring Frederick Warde, is introduced to Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Feng Shui’. Anything to save it from being done straight with Ennio Morricone…
Links
YouTube page
Keith Jones’ Shakespeare on Film: A Microblog
Richard III on DVD from Kino
Silent Julius Caesar and Old-Fashioned English Wassail
Date: 2008
Posted by: kjnwcedu
Credits: Created by Keith Jones
Cast: Amleto Novelli, Giovanna Terribili Gonzalès, Pina Menichelli, Ruffo Geri, Ignazio Lupi, Irene Mattadra, Bruto Castellani, Augusto Mastripietri, Sigira Geri, Orlando Ricci, Carlo Duse, Lea Orlandi
Duration: 0.58
Keith Jones is an American professor of English and Literature who maintains the Shakespeare and Film Microblog. As well as gathering together information and thoughts on Shakespeare and film, Jones adds his own mashups, of which this is an uplifting example. Strictly speaking the Italian 1914 epic Cajus Julius Caesar has nothing to do with Shakespeare play, but the joyous coming together of ancient Romans milling about with an (unnamed) group singing the Gower Wassail demands its inclusion here.
Links
YouTube page
Keith Jones’ Shakespeare on Film: A Microblog
